THE HOUSE OF YORKE.
CHAPTER V.
NEW FRIENDS
Enough is not only as good as a feast, it is better; and a little less than enough is better yet. How dear is that affection in which we have something to forgive! How charming is that beauty where the defects serve as indices to point out how great the beauty is! How wholesome is that salt of labor which gives a taste to leisure! For since the time of Eve, the point of perfection, save with God, has been the point of decay; and profuse wealth has often deprived its possessor of great riches.
What we arrive at by this preamble is that the Yorkes had been unconsciously suffering from the apathy of satisfied wants, and were now delighted to find that comparative poverty brings many a pleasure in its train.
"Mamma," Clara exclaimed, "I do believe there is a certain pleasure in making the best of things."
It was the morning after their arrival, and the young woman was standing in a chair, driving a nail to hang on a picture. She had begun by groaning at sight of the wall, a white stucco painted over with brown flower-pots, holding blossoming rose-trees. But the cord of the frame matched those roses, and in some unexplained way the picture looked well on that background.
Mrs. Yorke, looking on, smiled at the remark. "There is a very certain pleasure in it, my dear," she said; "and I am glad that you have found it out."
Clara considered, gave the nail another blow, evened the picture, and contemplated it with her head on one side. It was an engraving of Le Brun's picture of Alexander at the camp of Darius. "Mamma," she began again, "I think that Alexander the Great ought to have had another name after the adjective."
"What name, child?"